Set to feature 350-400 cars at launch. Weather (ice, snow (if appropriate to the region), rain, mist/fog) and night racing finally. It's not specified if there's a full day to night transition, but given the engine is built on the work done in Horizon 2, that will probably be the case.

Also team are hoping to bump the number of players over 20 cars, but this may not make it.

Graphically it's as big as a leap as F3 was over F2, perhaps more.

Forza Horizon 2 is on a trajectory to hit 1 million copies soldby mid november. Approximately 700,000 copies sold so far with over 2/3rds of players online. Forza Horizon 3 is going forward for release around the same time in 2016.

Phantom Dust "Season 1" is due to arrive Q3 2015

Blurs pre-rendered cinematics for Halo 2: Anniversary are using near 1:1 in-game assets as Halo 5

Quantum Break is going to be native 1080p unless the apocalypse starts.

Gears of War 4 is set in Seras far future many hundreds of years after Gears of War 3. Split-screen co-op is in. 60fps is the new hotness.

There is to be a new Halo videogame series with Jameson Locke as the lead and will co-exist alongside the mainline Halo series. As Halo and Gears of War are on 3 year rotations, this will be released in the gap year. It's going for a more ODST vibe and is due to integrate with the TV series in terms of canon. Basically Halo Chronicles as it was meant to be.

Thursday, 9 October 2014

David Cage initially wasn't going to sign with Sony after completion of Heavy Rain to publish what became Beyond : Two Souls, hence why post release in numerous interviews he would tout Heavy Rains better than expected sales, he was trying to sell himself to other publishers. None of them were interested, Sony bit because they didn't have many exclusives and Quantic Dream had no choice.

Microsoft uses Ryse as a performance benchmark internally. Presently - post SDK improvements -the game is topping at a variable 50-60fps at 900p, the team believes it could crack a"mostly locked" 60fps at 1080p by the middle of next year.

Evolution Studios is going to suffer significant layoffs in 4-5 months time. This is due to lukewarm reception and the extended troubled development of Driveclub (in addition to lack of direction with the last two motorstorm games). If the studio survives, it's likely going to be re-focused to small digital titles.

There is definitely going to be a Gears of War collection released in late 2015 similar to the Master Chief collection, though the visuals will merely be updated and tweaked, this won't be a full on remake (ala Anniversary), but will include a Beta to Gears of War 4 (due November 15th 2016) and a cross-game lobby of ALL Gears of War game maps.

Uncharted 4: A Thiefs End will no longer be shipping with split-screen campaign co-op due to technical issues.

Halo Wars is definitely coming back. Microsofts intention is for the series to act as bridges between mainline Halo games, effectively replacing/accompanying Spartan Ops type expansions. Full voice and Kinect support accompany controller based gameplay.

Sony is planning PS4 games to release on Playstation Now, the initial intention is to give a 12-18 month exclusivity window for the native PS4 versions.

Microsoft have a similar timed exclusivity window with 2 as yet unannounced third party publisher(s?) as they have with The Rise of the Tomb Raider. One new IP, the other existing. The existing one is a much bigger deal than Tomb Raider.

Scalebound has Online co-op along the lines of a multiplayer Shadow of the Collossus

Microsoft is monitoring Forza Horizons impact as an IP, in the event of franchise fatigue they have the option of reverting to a Project Gotham Title.